The first democratic election in eight years in Fiji was today hailed by a multinational observer group as "credible" and representing the will of Fijians.
	Voreqe Bainimarama, who seized control of the Pacific island nation in a bloodless coup in 2006 was heading for a landslide victory with provisional results giving his Fiji First Party more than 60 per cent of the vote.
	"This was a credible election," said a statement from the 92-member panel drawn from 13 countries around the world as well as the European Union.
	"While counting is ongoing and the results are yet to be finalised, we assess that the outcome is on track to broadly represent the will of the Fijian voters."
	The completed result from the election may not be known until Saturday.
	The observer group, jointly chaired by Australia, Indonesia and India, said that while there were some problems with voter registration and pre-polling it did not see any significant irregularities in the vote counting process.
	"Political .

International observers declare Fiji vote 'credible'

PTI Automatic

The aerospace company Blue Origin has struck a deal to build a US-made rocket engine that aims to eliminate reliance on Russian engines for American satellite launches.
	Blue Origin owner Jeff Bezos, who founded Amazon.Com and also owns the Washington Post, announced the deal to jointly fund a new BE-4 rocket engine with United Launch Alliance in the US capital yesterday.
	ULA is a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin.
	"ULA has put a satellite into orbit almost every month for the past eight years - they're the most reliable launch provider in history and their record of success is astonishing," Bezos said.
	"With the new ULA partnership, we're accelerating commercial development of the next great US-made rocket engine."
	The deal allows for a four-year development process, with full-scale testing in 2016 and first flight in 2019, Blue Origin said in a statement.
	The BE-4 would not replace the Russian-made RD-180 rocket engine that ULA uses to power its Atlas V ...

Amazon founder strikes deal to build US rocket engines

The deadliest Ebola epidemic on record has now infected more than 5,000 people in west Africa and killed around half of them, the World Health Organisation has said.
	The UN health agency said Tuesday a total of 5,347 people had been infected across five west African countries, and that 2,630 had died.
	In the three hardest-hit countries of Guinea, Libera and Sierra Leone, 45 per cent of the cases were recorded in the past three weeks, WHO said.
	Here are the latest WHO numbers, as of September 14:
	In Guinea, where the outbreak began at the start of the year, Ebola had claimed 601 lives, or 64 per cent of the 942 people infected.
	Thirty-three per cent of those cases surfaced in the 21 days leading up to September 14.
	In Liberia, which has been hit hardest by the outbreak, 1,459 people had died from Ebola, representing 54 per cent of the 2,710 people infected.
	A full 52 per cent, or 1,383, of those cases were recorded during the three weeks before September 14.
	In Sierra Leone, ...

Ebola death toll climbs to 2,630 out of 5,347 cases: WHO

A former Libyan air force chief was shot dead overnight in the country's violence-ridden second city of Benghazi, medical and army sources said today.
	"Unidentified gunmen killed former air force chief of staff general Ahmed Habib al-Mesmari in the Al-Hadaek district" in the city centre, a senior air base officer in Benghazi told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.
	Mesmari stood down as air force chief of staff in April after attending a meeting with renegade general Khalifa Haftar whom the then authorities in Tripoli accused of staging a coup d'etat.
	A hospital source in Benghazi said he had been "hit by several bullets".
	Since dictator Moamer Kadhafi's regime was ousted in 2011, dozens of military figures have been assassinated in Benghazi.
	For several months, the city has seen clashes between army forces loyal to Haftar and Islamist militias, including Ansar al-Sharia jihadists.
	The Libyan authorities and the United States consider Ansar al-Sharia to be a "terrorist" ...

Libya ex-air force chief murdered in Benghazi

China, one of the world's biggest gold consumers, today launched a new market for trading the precious metal, state media said, as it seeks to attract foreign investors to a year-old free trade zone (FTZ).
	The Shanghai Gold Exchange launched an international board in the city's FTZ in hopes that it might eventually challenge global gold markets like New York and London, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
	The move came just ahead of the one year anniversary of the founding of the zone and days after authorities removed a top official running it amid media reports he was under investigation for corruption.
	When China launched the FTZ last September, officials promised widespread reform including free convertibility of the yuan currency, but the slow pace of change has frustrated businesses, especially foreign companies.
	Chinese Premier Li Keqiang toured the FTZ today, Shanghai authorities said, a visit viewed as a central government show of support for the pilot project.
	The 

China launches gold market to bolster fortunes of FTZ

Marshall Islands President Christopher Loeak was forced to heightened the seawall protecting his home last year but says the year-old defences are now barely enough to protect his family from a "climate emergency".
	"Out here in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, climate change has arrived," Loeak said in the video to be released globally tomorrow, ahead of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's climate summit in New York City next week.
	Standing outside his home in the capital Majuro next to the heightened seawall, Loeak tells the camera that it is "barely enough to protect my family from the encroaching waves".
	"For the Marshall Islands and our friends in the Pacific, this is already a full-blown climate emergency," Loeak said.
	He will join more then 100 heads of state at the September 23 forum which he hopes will galvanise support to build "the greatest climate change alliance" the world has seen.
	The United Nations is seeking to limit global warming to two degrees Celsius (3.6 ...

Ocean-threatened Marshall's leader posts climate video plea

A Nepalese court has convicted Charles Sobhraj of a second murder, sentencing the alleged serial killer, con man and prison escape artist to life in prison, an official said today.
	Sobhraj, a French citizen of Vietnamese and Indian parentage -- nicknamed the "bikini killer" -- is already serving a life sentence in Nepal for the murder of US tourist Connie Joe Bronzich on Kathmandu's outskirts in 1975.
	The 70-year-old was convicted this week of murdering Canadian backpacker Laurent Carriere, a district court registrar told AFP.
	The bodies of Bronzich and her friend Carriere, both repeatedly stabbed and burnt beyond recognition, were found a few days apart in two different areas of Kathmandu.
	"The judge issued a guilty verdict on Wednesday evening and sentenced Charles Sobhraj to a lifetime imprisonment on the charge of murdering Laurent Carriere," Khadga Raj Adhikari, registrar at Bhaktapur District Court, located in a city near Kathmandu.
	Sobhraj, who has been linked to a string .

French 'bikini killer' convicted of second murder in Nepal

The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe said today it would double the number of its observers in Ukraine to 500 to oversee a fragile ceasefire between Kiev and pro-Russian rebels.
	The observers will be deployed over the next two and a half months, said Ertugrul Apakan, who oversees observers at the Vienna-based pan-European body.
	The deployment is part of an OSCE-brokered truce signed 13 days ago between officials in Kiev and Ukrainian rebel leaders that has eased deadly violence in restive eastern Ukraine.
	"The monitoring of the ceasefire is a new job," Apakan said.
	He said the organisation planned to deploy surveillance drones along Ukraine's border with Russia, and that monitors would be assisted by around 400 staff providing logistical support.
	The OSCE aims to have "more people" that are "more mobile, more flexible" in eastern Ukraine, Apakan added, where five months of fighting has claimed nearly 2,900 lives.

OSCE says will double its observers in Ukraine to 500

South African anti-apartheid hero Albie Sachs and former Norwegian prime minister Gro Harlem Brundtland, hailed as the "godmother" of sustainable development, were among five people today presented with the first Tang Prize, touted as Asia's version of the Nobels.
	Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou presented the awards, which honour outstanding contributions to the environment, human rights, medicine and Sinology.
	Brundtland, recognised for her life-long dedication to protection of the environment, called for urgent action to address environmental and climate change over the last quarter of a century.
	"We're not far sighted enough to do what is needed" on climate change, she warned, addressing the guests invited to the presentation ceremony in Taipei.
	But she added: "I do believe we'll be able to lay out scientific and technical challenges for the global communities towards a better balance of economic development, environment integrity and social quality for the benefit of all ...

Anti-apartheid hero, ex-Norway PM awarded 'Asian Nobel' prizes

Pope Francis has warned that Christians in Iraq and Syria face persecution just as Jews have in the past, a prominent American Jewish leader said today.
	"You have suffered, now it's our turn," World Jewish Congress president Ronald Lauder said the pope told him in a private audience.
	Francis also repeated his recent warning that the global rash of religious extremism may have sparked "a third world war", said Lauder, who met with the Roman Catholic leader late yesterday at the Vatican.
	Lauder, a prominent philanthropist and defender of Jewish cultural interests, denounced the international response to the suffering of Christians at the hands of extremists from the Islamic State and other groups.
	"First the Jews suffered savage attacks, and the world remained in silence. Now it is the Christians who are being annihilated, and once more the world says little. Why does the world not react?" he said.
	Lauder said reports described Islamic militants as tagging Christian houses with the 

Iraqi Christians suffering like Jews did: Pope

Prince Harry, fourth in line to the British throne, has been appointed as the honorary president of World Cup organisers England Rugby 2015, the organisation announced today.
	The move follows the 30-year-old royal's successful role in organising the Invictus Games, a four-day international event for injured war veterans that took place in London and concluded on Sunday.
	"With one year to go to the tournament, we are delighted to announce that Prince Harry has agreed to be our honorary president," said England Rugby 2015 chief executive Debbie Jevans.
	"The prince is a great rugby fan and recently inspired us all with the Invictus Games. We have no doubt that he will help us achieve our aim of staging a tournament that reaches out to new and existing rugby fans.

Prince Harry named World Cup honorary president

A team of BBC journalists was assaulted in southern Russia while researching a story about soldiers "being killed at the Ukraine border," the company said today after lodging a protest with Russian authorities.
	The three reporters were working in the southern city of Astrakhan when they were "assaulted by unidentified men in a coordinated attack," BBC said in a statement.
	"Our staff were badly beaten, their camera destroyed and then taken," the statement said.
	BBC spokesman James Hardy added separately: "All are OK."
	"The cameraman is continuing to receive treatment for concussion and other injuries," he added in written remarks.
	After the assault the journalists were questioned at a police station.
	They later "discovered that recording equipment - which was in their vehicle, at the police station - had been electronically wiped".
	The incident is "clearly part of a coordinated attempt to stop accredited news journalists reporting a legitimate news story," the BBC said, calling .

BBC reporters 'badly beaten' in Russia

Kiev today accused Moscow of massing its troops in annexed Crimea on the Ukraine border, rattling nerves just as President Petro Poroshenko prepared to meet US counterpart Barack Obama.
	The apparent push north by about 4,000 troops in the Black Sea peninsula came despite Russia's declared backing of a peace overture by Kiev to try to end five months of conflict in the rebellious east.
	"According to our information, almost all military units of the Russian Federation stationed in the north of occupied Crimea... Were pushed to the administrative border with Ukraine along with all their equipment and ammunition," National Security and Defence Council spokesman Andriy Lysenko told reporters.
	Poroshenko holds his first White House talks with Obama later today, seeking to gain security guarantees from Washington as he steers the former Soviet state on a clear westwards path.
	The meeting comes just two days after parliament in Kiev ratified a historic pact with the EU and adopted ...

Russia 'moves troops in Crimea' ahead of Ukraine-US meet

Russian President Vladimir Putin today slammed the European Union and the United States for violating basic World Trade Organisation principles in their bid to punish Russia over the Ukraine crisis.
	"Limits introduced against Russia are none other than a rejection by some of our partners of basic WTO principles," he told a government meeting in televised comments.
	"This is all done in a politicised manner, without any observation of WTO norms."
	"The principle of equal access for all countries to markets for goods and services is being violated. The regime of 'most favoured nation' treatment and the principle of free and fair competition are being ignored," said the Russian president.
	"Essentially, a group of countries unilaterally allowed themselves to cross out these and a number of other WTO principles and rules for Russia, which is among the world's six largest economies."
	Washington and Brussels introduced several rounds of biting sanctions against Russia over Moscow's ...

Western sanctions violate WTO principles: Putin

Nepal today launched a drive to eradicate polio by supplementing oral vaccines with an injection that experts say will boost children's immunity against the disease.
	The Himalayan nation has experienced intermittent success with its oral vaccine-focused campaign, as new cases have turned up every few years, most recently in 2010, when the outbreak was blamed on cross-border transmissions from neighbouring India.
	Since the oral vaccine contains a weakened form of the live polio virus that can cause infections, experts have called for it to be supplemented and eventually replaced with the injection, which is already used in dozens of developed countries.
	The new rollout will target underdeveloped and developing countries, where the oral vaccine has long been the exclusive choice, being cheaper, easier and quicker to administer. Nepal is the first nation in South Asia to administer the jab.
	"The last transmission of polio from one person to another in Nepal was almost five years ...

Nepal adopts jab to boost polio fight

Five people died when storms turned a peaceful river that bordered their camping site in southern France into a raging torrent that swept them away, rescue workers said today.
	The site in Lamalou-les-Bains was devastated by the flood overnight as storms that had already killed an elderly lady in the nearby region of Aveyron also left a person missing in another neighbouring department.
	In Lamalou-les-Bains, a man and a woman were found dead in two different caravans, while a person who was walking in the site was swept away by a wave more than two metres high, local authorities said.
	Rescue workers found two other bodies this morning but were unable to determine whether they were those of two people still missing.
	In one particularly tragic story, a man who was trying to save a woman from drowning saw his own wife and daughter swept away in their caravan, the town's mayor told AFP.
	"The father, who was around 60, went out and saw a woman who was going to drown," Philippe Tailland 

Five die as flash flood sweeps through French camping site

The death toll from a collapsed guesthouse at a megachurch in Nigeria's financial capital Lagos has risen to 80 after more bodies were pulled from the rubble, rescuers said today.
	The guesthouse at popular preacher and televangelist TB Joshua's Synagogue Church of All Nations (SCOAN) came down last Friday, leaving scores trapped in the debris.
	"The death toll is now 80. We recovered 10 more bodies yesterday evening while the number of those rescued stands at 131," said Ibrahim Farinloye, of the National Emergency Management Agency.
	The identities of the victims were yet to be ascertained because the church, whose officials denied rescue workers access in the first three days, was not co-operating, he added.
	"The church has refused to furnish us with the identities and nationalities of those in the building when it caved in," he told AFP.
	Rescue operations had been due to finish yesterday but Farinloye said the search had been extended.
	Some 300 South Africans were said to be ...

Death toll in Nigeria building collapse rises to 80: rescuers

China's two-time Grand Slam-winner Li Na is poised to retire, state media reported Thursday, in a move which would bring down the curtains on Asia's most successful tennis career.
     The sports channel of state-owned CNTV cited Li's agency, IMG, as saying the tennis star would hold a briefing on Sunday to announce the news but also said she might make an official announcement on Friday via social media.
     A separate report by CCTV-5, the sports channel of state broadcaster China Central Television, quoted unnamed insiders as saying Li, 32, will announce her retirement because of injuries on Friday.
     "According to insiders, Li Na will officially announce her retirement on September 19," CCTV-5 said on its verified microblog.
     "She is reportedly retiring because she is unable to continue competing due to her physical condition," it said.
     The broadcaster did not give any details about its sources. An employee at the Beijing office of IMG told AFP that Li's manager was ..

China's Li Na set to retire - state media

Beijing today strongly denied a US congressional panel's claim that Chinese government-linked hackers had launched dozens of cyberattacks on American defence contractors, saying the charges were "fabricated out of thin air".
	The denial came a day after a Senate panel released a study finding that hackers had gained access to systems run by companies doing contract work for the US Transportation Command (TRANSCOM) at least 50 times between 2012 and 2013, potentially compromising military operations.
	"Chinese law prohibits cyberattacks and other crimes, and cracks down on such crimes," Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei said. "The Chinese government and military will never support hacker attacks."
	"The accusation against China is fabricated out of thin air, and is groundless," he added. "We urge the American side to stop its irresponsible accusations against China."
	The row is the latest cyber-security spat to roil US-China relations.
	In May this year, China banned the use 

China says US hacking charges 'fabricated out of thin air'

Thailand's junta chief apologised today for suggesting tourists in bikinis could be more vulnerable to attack, comments which caused an international outcry following the brutal murder of two British holidaymakers.
	Prayut Chan-O-Cha, who is also prime minister, yesterday drew condemnation after questioning the safety of female tourists in the kingdom in off-the-cuff comments to government officials.
	"They think our country is beautiful and is safe so they can do whatever they want, they can wear bikinis and walk everywhere," Prayut - who is also prime minister - said.
	But "can they be safe in bikinis... Unless they are not beautiful?"
	The remarks came just two days after the battered bodies of British tourists David Miller, 24 and Hannah Witheridge, 23, were found on the southern resort island of Koh Tao.
	In a rare public moment of contrition from the tough-talking army chief, Prayut said he did not mean to cause distress.
	"I'm sorry that it hurt people," Prayut said at a ...

Thai junta chief 'sorry' for bikini remarks after Brit murder

James Sutherland has been reappointed as Cricket Australia's chief executive beyond the 2015 World Cup, the organisation said today.
     Sutherland, 49, took over CA's top post in 2001 at the age of 35 as the youngest chief executive to be named by the governing body.
     His latest three-year deal had been due to expire in June 2015.
     "I'm very grateful to the board for the confidence and faith it has showed in me to continue as CEO beyond next year," Sutherland told reporters.
     "It is a huge honour to lead the game and I'm as passionate as I have ever been to deliver on our strategy of making cricket Australia's favourite sport."
     CA chairman Wally Edwards said the board had agreed to move Sutherland off a fixed-term contract that was due to finish after the ICC Cricket World Cup to an ongoing employment arrangement.
     "The change recognises the outstanding job James is doing leading Australian cricket," Edwards said in a note to CA staff.
     Australia play a ...

AFP

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